


Ache

by Crime4Lime



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Can be seen as platonic or not idc, Dream In Prison, George realizes he cant function without Dream LOL, M/M, Prison Visit, Sad GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), kinda comfort not really, missing friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:27:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29381355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crime4Lime/pseuds/Crime4Lime
Summary: When George wakes up, he makes breakfast for two. When he opens a door, he always holds it too long, waiting patiently for someone to pass through. When he and his friends all sit down to play cards, they leave a space beside him.A space Dream can't fill.George knows what Dream did. Knows he deserves his punishment.But that doesn't stop the ache.George visits the prison.
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity & GeorgeNotFound & Karl Jacobs & Sapnap, Alexis | Quackity & Karl Jacobs & Sapnap, Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 114





	Ache

**Author's Note:**

> hello :)  
> As always, if any of the people/relationships say their uncomfy with fics i will take this down! That being said, this isnt really a shipping fic, but feel free to see it however you wish! The way I write is def a little sus but thats okay LOL  
> This is a fic on the characters the dream smp peeps portray, not their true personalities.

The wind whips around George, yanking him in different directions. It isn’t a simple wind, it’s a raging one, coming from different directions and tugging and pulling, infuriated. George’s balance feels off, his normally calm, centered disposition thrown off as his two friends approach him.

Sapnap has a cut on his lip, but his armor looks pristine. He’d shined it just for this day. Quackity has barely any armor on, but a solemn glint lay in his eyes.

George wonders if either of them _feel_ the weight of what they’d done. George hadn’t even done anything, but he felt it. Like boulders on his back, like a cave that keeps narrowing the farther he walks in.

He knew the outcome of their journey as soon as they returned unharmed.

It made him ache.

“We did it, George,” Quackity mutters, his eyes avoiding George’s. George distantly wonders if he’s that obvious, to make Quackity avoid his eyes. if his swirling mess of emotions is available for anyone who cares to look.

“You should’ve been there,” Sapnap says, and George can hear the disgust, the anger. “What he was gonna do to Tubbo, to the rest of the server, what he’d-“

“I don’t want to hear it,” George snapped, sharply cutting Sapnap off.

He could feel them looking at him. He clenched his fist.

(What did they expect? For George to stand still and listen? To nod excitedly when he hears Tommy finally had the bravery to say how Dream manipulated and tormented him? To clap his hands when he hears that they’d shoved Dream in a box, barely any health and no armor, as he scrambled to explain why he should live?)

“…He deserved it George,” Alex says, his voice still far too quiet, his posture far too stiff. Maybe George isn’t an open book to everyone. Maybe Quackity sees too much.

George scoffed. “As if I don’t know that.”

The trio stands still, an awkward space between the pair and George.

As if he doesn’t know.

\----

George can’t get Dream out of his head.

Automatically making enough food for two. Opening his mouth to ask his friends if Dream could come along, before realizing he’s locked in a cell somewhere, alone. Dreaming of his laugh, how his shoulders shake and how he wraps his arms around his stomach, as if the laugh will burst from his seams if he doesn’t hold tight. Late nights watching the stars, waiting, waiting for Dream to continue the routine and sleepily pad up to stairs and gently murmur for George to get some sleep.

Picturing Dream’s face has become a challenge, one that took careful construction, doing the maths in his head, weighing if Dream’s hair covered the scar on his temple, squinting at memories to see just how prominent Dream’s dimple really was.

“He actually lives in your head rent free,” Quackity’s teasing voice -with a hidden edge-entered his mind, provoked after George had called him Dream for the 5th time that week.

He hadn’t even seen Dream in months, not since his dethroning.

“To protect you, my ass,” Sapnap had said. “All he wants is power,” His voice filled with anger, his fists clenched at his side, Karl’s hand resting lightly on his shoulder.

(When George was stressed by situations Dream would lean on him, like the way a big dog leans on you when they want more attention.)

Another time, Sapnap’s head down, shoulders pulled up to his ears. The two of them alone, on the roof of the community house (before it was burnt down.) “He doesn’t care about us, does he?”

George had swallowed. “It doesn’t seem like it,” He’d replied, fiddling with his fingers so he didn’t have to look at Sapnap.

Sapnap continues as if George hadn’t spoken. “Maybe he never did.”

George didn’t believe that.

He _knew_ Dream. Knew the way he fidgeted with his sleeves, the pattern he tapped his foot to. How if he was comfortable, he preferred to pace while he rambled. Had the way Dream laughed memorized, but also the way Dream looked when he was hurt, his eyebrows drawn low, leaning away from the hurt like it was a disease he could socially distance from. To anyone else, a hurt Dream could look like an annoyed or angry one.

George knew the difference.

So George knew, _knew_ that Dream cared. Because that’s what he’d been known for, before all this shit had happened. Dream was the one that’d follow you around as you gathered tools he’d already gotten. He was the one that would stay up late as you crafted endlessly, tossing an iron ingot lazily between hands as he mused the commonality of ores. Dream was the man that had been hurt when George said he hadn’t felt like talking to him that day. (George had forgotten that his confident friend could even _be_ hurt, so when he’d stumbled across Dream later, his head on his knees, fingers bleeding from picking at, it’d taken him a while to connect the dots.)

But Dream was also prideful, and arrogant. Dream was the person that carefully maneuvered his way to be the leader of their trio. (Not that George and Sapnap ever fought him.) He was the one that rarely took sides in George and Sapnap’s arguments, so that both would come to him for the solution. The one that wanted any newcomer to know that they were on Dream’s lands, no one else’s. The man that insisted that everyone remain under his power, only slackening his hold when he was offered power over the rowdiest boy on the server.

Dream didn’t wake up one day evil, like Sapnap seemed to think. He also wasn’t always evil.

(Can a person really be evil?)

(Is Dream even a person anymore?)

(George doesn’t mean that. He knows Dream.)

It all started with a person. A person serious but funny, casual but intense, insecure but cocky. A person that liked to be in control, sure, but was kind with his actions once he got that control.

That was the problem, George thinks. Dream had never had to fight for his power before. And now he didn’t know how to stop.

Staring at the falling lava in front of him, with Sam at his back, George can’t help but think that even this won’t be able to stop Dream.

The last of the lava clears, pooling far below at the bottom of the hall.

A cell floats in the center of the large room.

“Make sure to walk with the path,” Sam says, his gloved hand resting on George’s shoulder. He squeezes lightly. “Say the word, and I’ll bring you right back.”

Bad had visited Dream a bit ago. When he’d come back and relayed the story to an anxiously waiting Sapnap and George, Bad had said that “Sam promised that Dream couldn’t hurt him, and Sam would intervene if anything happened.”

He didn’t make that promise to George.

(Because Dream wouldn’t hurt George.)

George nodded at Sam, who turned and flipped a lever. He felt the blocks beneath him jolt, and he nervously begins to walk with it.

George knows you aren’t supposed to look down when feeling nervous about heights, but the lava below seems much easier to face than the cell in front of him. George thinks about mis stepping, tumbling into the waiting lava below, Dream’s face, for once in the two’s friendship Dream being unable to reach out to save him.

When the moving path finally arrives at the cell, he hurriedly steps off it, leaning away from the edge.

George looks up.

Dream is standing on the other side of a one block barrier.

(George thinks of the Dream he used to see every day. Constantly shifting how he stood, fidgeting with his hands, reaching out to fix George’s shirt. Pacing when his thoughts ran too fast for his mouth. Around friends, his shoulders slouching into the nearest wall or tree. How when the others left, he’d reach back casually and undo the knot holding his mask. His _smile_ , the way it pulled over his teeth to reveal a chip on his left front tooth, the way it tugged up more on one side and how his pinkish lips perfectly contrasted the bright white of his teeth. His blonde hair adorably unorganized, golden in the sun, his armor shining, making his broad shoulders look broader and tying in tight to the leanness of his stomach.)

Now, Dream’s hair looks almost brown and hangs in clumps around his head. Its longer than George is used to, the front falling past his nose and the back curling at his neck. He stands still, his hands open at his side, tapping no rhythms, empty without his usual axe. Though his shoulders are still straight, there’s a weight to him, as if holding himself up takes all conscious thought. His hoodie was beyond tattered, covered in holes, the edges ripped and dangling strings. His black trousers have a hole in the knee. His face is scarred, but that it always was, a scar running from his temple and ending at his lip, another one starting on his nose and going across his cheek.

He looks pale. George can’t see his freckles.

Sam shouts something across the abyss, George can’t hear it.

He feels heat at his back and turns from Dream’s endless gaze to watch the lava fall back down.

He hears pistons shift, and he knows without looking back that the barrier between the two has lowered.

George turns back slowly. Every part of him is screaming (But not in fear, not around Dream, never around Dream) Screaming at him to yell for Sam, to get him out of here, screaming at him to run into Dream’s arms and sob and sob until there’s no ache left in him.

When he meets Dream’s eyes again, he sees something in them, some glimpse of his old friend, but he doesn’t know what to do with it.

“I didn’t expect you to come,” His voice is low, and holds that note that it always does around George. ( _Reverent_ , Bad had mused, when George asked what he could possibly mean when he said Dream spoke different around him.)

George nearly trips into his old habits, almost scoffs at Dream’s words. (This isn’t like old times. It can never be like old times.) “Bad said you wanted to see me,” He finally responds, not breaking his eye contact with Dream.

Dream doesn’t respond.

George glances around the cell.

A chest in the corner, a cauldron of water, an item frame on the wall holding a clock. It’s the middle of the night.

“I- I didn’t think you cared, anymore,” Dream says.

George thinks of Dream walking away from him, leading Eret to the throne. “Weird,” George says, a sharp edge creeping into his voice, “I’d thought the same of you,”

(George aches, aches that him and Dream could even have reached this point, this distance, standing on two separate mountains with a fallen bridge between them. They were so much more than this.)

Dream turns, taking heavy steps to retreat to the back wall and sit down. He stretches out one of his long legs, draws his other one up, slinging an arm across it. “So,” He starts, “If I don’t care, why’d you come?”

_I can’t get you out of my head._

_It hurts. Missing you is an endless ache._

George takes some hesitant steps forward, sinking down elegantly a couple feet in front of Dream’s shoe. “I dunno,” George says. “Closure, I guess?”

George doesn’t think he imagines the slight flinch that goes across Dream’s face.

(Closure. Closure. Closure means somethings ending, drawing to a close, a seemingly endless chapter drawing shut with a snap.)

(George aches.)

Dream hums in acknowledgement, a couple seconds after than what would be considered normal.

They sit in silence.

The room was almost unbearably hot, George assumed it from the lava surrounding it. He watched as a drop of sweat followed the edge of Dream’s scar, watched it pool just above his lips. (Soft, pink, bitten raw.) George felt its twin drip down his back, making his shirt stick tight.

(George had never seen Dream so… worn. His knuckles scabbed, nailbeds bleeding. Even his scars look worse than normal, more puckered on the edges.)

“Why did you never come back?” George’s whisper cut the air harsh, like using a sword in fine dining.

He watched Dream swallow, watched the glimmer on his neck shine when brought to the pale light then hide back into the shadows cast by the obsidian. “Because” Dream’s voice was clear, strong -without regret- but holding that soft edge it always did for George. “You would’ve expected an apology, and I had none to give.”

George doesn’t quite know what to say to that.

“Though it wasn’t my intention to like- hurt your feelings, with the whole dethroning thing, I still knew I made the right choice,”

_That’s the problem Dream._

_Did you still make the right choice when you captured a nation? When you threatened to kill a 16-year-old boys best friend for your gain of power?_

“That never stopped you before,” George muttered, and when Dream looked confused, he continued, “We’ve had disagreements before, Dream. There’s been times I so desperately wanted an apology from you, not just because you hurt my feelings, because you needed to know you were _wrong_. And that didn’t come, but I was fine with it, because you were by my side, and nothing could touch me then.”

_And then you left._

_You left me Dream._

_You let me think you hated me._

Dream swallowed again -his nervous habit- and reached up to push his hair off his face. “I thought this was bigger.”

“I thought our friendship was bigger.”

Dream looks at his lap.

(George ached. Because he wanted to be confident when his mind told him to _look_ at Dream, to read Dream as he had always been able to and see him hurting. To be confident when he concludes that Dream made mistakes, misjudged, but-)

“I… didn’t give you enough credit, I think,”

George scoffed, felt the heat burning up his chest and to his neck as he snapped, “ _No_ , Dream, you can’t do that, you can’t sit back and put the blame on everyone else so you can sit back on your sorry ass-“

“No- no George, I promise…” He trails off, and once George fully closes his mouth, acknowledging he’ll let Dream speak, he continues, “I meant,” Dream murmurs, fidgeting with his hands in his lap, “That- no one else at the time, was forgiving me. And- they don’t have to. I know what I did to them. And I guess I thought…”

“So, you’re telling me,” George says, a slight edge to his tone, “That you just assumed you knew me, and that I was like everyone else, than went on your merry way?”

Dream hangs his head.

George aches.

(Because he doesn’t think Dream was lying. But he could be.)

“I didn’t like you as king,” Dream murmurs lowly. “I liked some things, like how it was easier to keep an eye on you, and I liked having someone I really really trusted there…”

“But?”

Dream exhales. “But” He amends, “You got an assassination attempt right away. Tommy burnt your house. And everywhere people went, people knew, knew that you had power, and knew that I gave you it,”

“Because I was neutral,”

Dream looked up, finally meeting his eye. “But people saw it as more than that,”

George had to fight the urge to turn away, to flush under his stare. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Dream shrugs, lightening his staring, sinking into the wall behind us. “What they always see with us,” He says, calmly.

“And what does _that_ mean?”

Dream tilts his head. “That you mean something more to me.”

George’s breath inhales shaky, than exhales in a soft _whoosh._ “Do I?”

Finally ( _Finally)_ a hint of that cocky grin appears on Dream’s face, gliding over sharp white teeth. “Maybe,”

George looks down at his hands, resting in his lap.

“Cut the bullshit,” He says finally, softly.

“I’m not spewing any,” Dream replies immediately.

“Maybe,” George allows, “But that definitely isn’t the whole truth.”

Dream only shrugs again.

“So?” George prods.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t think I can say anything to make you not hate me.”

“I never said I wanted you to.”

“You hinted at it.”

“How so?”

Dream levels his gaze at him, squinting slightly. “You’re here. And you didn’t come to yell.”

“What did I come for?”

Dream raises a brow. “Closure, I guess.”

George looks away.

Dream shifts slightly, sinking farther down the wall (It makes his feet closer to George’s knees, but for once the move isn’t some attempt to slyly get close to George, Dream was just getting more comfortable.)

“Do I have to?” George blurts.

Dream blinks slowly at him, like a cat. “Have to what?”

“Forgive you.”

“Well,” Dream says, “Its not like I’m making you,”

“I know,” George says, nervously tracing the seam on the side of his jeans. “But…”

Silence came, except for the bubble of lava behind him.

“But?” Dream probes.

(Dream was best at that. Giving George enough time to continue if he wanted, and then gently prodding him when he realized that’s all George wanted. A confirmation that Dream was listening, a check that he wanted George to continue.)

“But…” George mutters. “I don’t- I don’t think I _can_ forgive you, but I don’t know if I need to.”

He spares a glance at Dream, to find him watching George, his brows furrowed, shadowing his eyes. “I’m not sure I’m following,” Dream says slowly.

George swallows. (A habit he surely developed from Dream) “I- haven’t been doing well,” George admits, voice abrupt. “I’m surrounded by friends constantly, I wake up to breakfast with Bad and Sapnap and then go piss around with Karl and Quackity all day, I tend to my house, I do everything I wanted before…”

He can’t look at Dream.

“But... Karl says I look dead on my feet. Bad won’t stop asking me if somethings wrong. I haven’t been eating well. Or sleeping, for that matter. So at night I wander onto my roof and stare at the stars and realize the only thing missing is you.”

There’s a fray in his jeans, a string sticking out from the seam he’s pinching harshly between his fingers.

He can’t look at Dream.

(And for the record, George wouldn’t be able to look at himself, either. He knows what Dream has done. He knows. But here he sits, eyes stinging, fists clenched, aching for his best friend to reach out and wrap him in his arms and point out the stars.)

(Dream can’t see the stars in the cell. Where the sharp points of the obsidian hit the light, it almost looks like it.)

“Do you think that’s the best idea?” He leans in automatically to catch Dream’s voice.

The best idea. To refriend his best friend, the one who’s laugh immediately made him smile, knew how to soften his voice just enough to make George feel better but not pitied on. (Knew how to twist the mind of a 16-year-old, knew how to break a happy country from the inside out.)

“Maybe not,” George says. “I don’t think I can do too much else.”

“And why not?”

George looks to the side, at the clock on Dream’s wall. He can’t say it.

“George,” Soft, almost whispered.

He doesn’t want to say it.

“Hurts,” He says finally, and his voice is much smaller than he’d like it.

He hears Dream inhale quietly, the way you do when a punch to a gut hits a little harder than you anticipate.

(George aches, and its all-consuming, and he _knows_ , knows he could fix it if he let Dream open his arms and wrap tight and never let go. Because he thinks Dream would let him stay, if he honestly knew that was what George wanted. Dream had always struggled with saying no to George.)

(But he also knows that a new pain would rise, a guilt.)

(But he doesn’t think that would be as consuming as the ache.)

“It’s okay, you know,” He hates how gentle Dream’s voice is, “To hurt, to miss something you’re letting go. It doesn’t mean you’re wrong to let go.”

 _I know,_ George thinks. _But it’s too much. I can’t live without you, Dream, because where I am can’t really be called living._

George swallows around a lump in his throat. “Is that what you want? Me to let go?”

“No,” Dream says bluntly, “But I think that’s what may be best for you.”

“And what if I’m not strong enough? To handle that pain?” _The pain of losing you, the pain of waking up every day and trying to picture your laugh, the pain of staring at the stars with empty spot besides him._

“You are,” Dream says firmly.

George looks at him, looks at the flush on his cheeks from the heat and the dirt on his nose from who knows how long ago. His gaze is as firm and confident as his words.

“And if I don’t want to be?”

He watches Dream’s eyes soften (Not pitying, never pitying for George. Dream looks at him like he hurts with George, like he can feel the ache numbing his fingertips and pulsing in his chest.)

“Then I don’t know,” Dream murmurs. “I think that’s up to you.”

George exhales.

“I don’t want it to be,”

“You were never the best at decisions,”

George chokes on his laugh, he can’t help it.

Then Dream starts laughing, his horrible awful wheezing one, where he tilts his head back and wraps his arms tight around him, laughing in bursts of air falling out of him like a dying balloon. And all that does is make George laugh harder, as it always did -always will- despite the joke not being very funny. Dream seems unable to calm down, still cackling -it really wasn’t that funny Dream- but it continues to make helpless giggles escape George as he squeezed his knees to his chest, hiding his face in them.

“You’re so dumb,” George mutters, and Dream chokes on another laugh.

(He can’t live without this. This is George’s fuel. If George is a flower, Dream is the sun, everyone else distant stars.)

Dream calms down, his laughs distancing from each other, growing in space until he lets out a final chuckle and that is that.

“Dream,” George’s voice is quiet.

“George,” Dream’s voice is soft, reverent.

George flushes- as he always does- and he wants to tell him, to say that he doesn’t know what he wants, that he needs to go talk to Bad and Karl and Alex and Sapnap, that he needs to sit under the stars and sob and ache, that he cant make the decision here because that’s surely biased with Dream sitting in front of him looking closer to breaking than George had ever seen-

Dream opens his arms, a gentle invitation.

George shakes his head, “I don’t know, what I want, if I can forgive you-“

“I know,” -the soft tone takes over Dream’s voice entirely- “Its okay, George, you don’t have to decide right now.”

_It’s okay._

(George could never have really said no anyways.)

George moved, half getting up, sitting down beside Dream with no space between their thighs. (Dream’s very slouched, it makes George’s head get close to clearing Dream’s shoulder.) They fit together as they always did, Dream wrapping a tight arm around his side, George curling in as close as he could get, his nose nudging the hollow of Dream’s collarbone. Dream ties his fingers in the fabric of George’s shirt, he brings his opposite hand up to gently brush through George’s hair.

(George thinks about Quackity seeing him now, or Sapnap. Thinks of their disgust, their anger. Wonders if they would even bother to ask what the hell he was doing before they left him.)

He nuzzles further in Dream’s shirt, soothing the ache inside him.

“It’ll be alright George,” Dream’s voice is a gentle murmur, meant only for George’s ears. “You’ll be alright, I know you, it’ll be okay.”

George isn’t so sure.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed! feel free to comment if you have any questions or critiques B)


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